I know the precise content of my dreams on February 20 of this year, because I know what I have dreamt every evening for time out of mind. On that night, you were in my dreams. You always are.
Your eternally devoted wife,
Viola
***
Faye closed the book and settled back into the chair that sat beside Joe’s bed. She tried not to dwell on how pale he was, and she failed. To distract them both, she began spinning fanciful stories, the way a loving parent dreams up tales to soothe a child who isn’t ready for bed. Her tales always involved animals and magic and spirits who lived in trees. Sometimes the thunder rumbled through her stories. Once, a hurricane even blasted its way into her imagination. But all the stories began in the same way, just as a parent’s stories always begin with “Once upon a time…”
Faye leaned back in the uncomfortable visitor’s chair and let the story roll out of her. It began, as all of her stories did, with the words, “When I get you back home to Joyeuse…”
Chapter Twenty-seven
When the hospital finally decided to let Joe go home, they didn’t give Faye much warning. One of his battery of doctors simply announced one morning, “He’s ready to go home. I’ll sign the paperwork, and we can have him out of there before noon.” A cynical part of her presumed that his student insurance, which was adequate but not generous, had reached the limit of what it would pay, so the doctors had hurriedly pronounced him ready to go home and be cared for by somebody cheap like Faye.
Except Faye hadn’t had time to go home and get the place ready for a convalescent who would need a lot of care. She hadn’t gone home at all, not in weeks. She’d just camped in Mike and Magda’s guest room whenever the hospital staff announced that she was abusing the concept of “visiting hours.”
She needed to put fresh, clean linens on Joe’s bed. For all she knew, Chip had slept there. Germs, evil karma, bad smells…Faye planned to scrub all invisible threats to Joe’s health right out of the house. If the timing worked out right, then she would dry the sheets on the clothesline and his bed could smell like all outdoors.
There was so much she needed to do, but she had friends to help her, and they knew that there was no chance that Faye could be convinced to let Joe go anywhere but to Joyeuse when he was finally sprung from the hospital. Sheriff Mike volunteered to wait with Joe until he was discharged, then trundle him onto the Gopher and give him a slow smooth boat ride out to the island. Magda volunteered to raid her own pantry for the groceries Faye needed and meet her on the dock at Liz’s with the goods.
Faye was afraid to ask Magda how Liz was dealing with Chip’s death, and Magda didn’t offer her any information. The answer to that question was so obvious: Liz was assuredly not taking it well.
When Faye arrived at the marina, she found not one but two of her dearest women friends waiting for her. Three sacks of food sat on the dock at Magda’s feet. Standing beside her were Emma and one of the sleek and luxurious lounge chairs that adorned her patio.
“Joe’s not going to be happy lolling around indoors all day. You’ll need to get the man outside. Put this thing on the porch where he can feel the sun and listen to the birds. He’ll get well right quick.”
***
The boat ride out to Joyeuse Island had been…interesting…with Emma’s lounge chair aboard. Even folded, it crowded Faye’s skiff significantly. Now it sat on the back porch of the big house, overlooking the deep green woods. A tray table and a coaster sat beside it, because Joe’s doctors wanted him hydrated. Faye figured she could pour water down his throat, if he refused to drink.
The soup was simmering. The laundry was done and the sheets were drying. Magda had tucked a stack of the sheriff’s hunting and fishing magazines among the groceries, so Joe had easy access to his preferred reading material. And a pile of rocks had been moved from the corner of his room to the floor of the porch, so Joe could chip stone any time he felt like it. Faye was way past ready for her patient to arrive. But she was being thwarted by hospital bureaucracy.
The doctor who had said Joe would be home by lunch had neglected to sign a piece of paper that must have been very important, because the staff was trying to track him down for that signature. Sheriff Mike had been calling Faye with regularity, keeping her posted on their status, but even if Joe were released right now, by the time he was taken to the car, driven to the dock, helped onto the Gopher, and hauled out to the island, hours would have passed. Faye was not prepared to spend all that time staring at the walls.
There was still a question to be answered, and Faye was not the type to tolerate that. Jedediah Bachelder had hidden a fabulous necklace on her island. She knew this to be true, because he’d left behind an emerald and a tiny bit of gold, and she’d found it. She didn’t get that same sense of resolution when she thought of the legendary Confederate Gold.
Her gut told her that a ghost of a chance remained that the Confederate Gold had left a shred of physical evidence behind. Faye would not be Faye if she didn’t look for it.
The sun was shining, Faye had no more housework to do, and she was a worthless ball of nervous energy. Maybe a little exploratory digging was in order.
***
Faye had dug in this spot once, and she’d found an emerald. She’d dug here again, and she’d found nothing but dirt. Now she was back a third time. Why was she wasting energy on this thing?
Because she’d thought of one more place to look. Not left. Not right. Not east, nor west. She had realized that she needed to look down. She needed to go deeper.
On her previous visit to this spot, she’d located the coordinates where the emerald had been found, then she’d looked laterally, excavating a pit that was wide but shallow. It hadn’t seemed logical for Bachelder to have buried something small like a necklace very far beneath the surface, so Faye had never looked there.
But several trunks full of gold? He would have had to go deep to bury that much treasure. Faye intended to start where she’d found the emerald and dig until she couldn’t dig any more. She’d dig until she hit water, and further, if that was what it took to be sure that no trace of the Confederate Gold had been left for her to find.
The irony of the situation was that, though the treasure was long-gone, it was still wreaking havoc. Gold-lust had driven Elizabeth Slater and Chip to murder, and it would likely make Faye’s own home life miserable for quite some time to come.
They were gone now, so they wouldn’t be skulking around her island looking for gold, but every history buff within three counties had heard rumors that the hiding place of the Confederate Gold had been found on Joyeuse Island…but the gold had not. Yet. Faye was bracing for a blitzkrieg of trespassers.
She peeled back the soil, layer by layer, looking for a treasure that she knew wasn’t there. It was clear that Jedediah Bachelder had returned and retrieved his necklace, leaving behind a single stray jewel and a broken finding. And she believed he’d retrieved the Confederate Gold, too.
Or maybe she was wrong about everything. Maybe his necklace had never been here at all, and she had found only the remnants of one of her ancestors’ jewels. French historians were even now scouring records of the royal family’s possessions for her, hoping to find something that matched the paltry evidence she’d uncovered so far. The sentimental part of her would rather have found Mariah’s necklace than Marie Antoinette’s, but a newsmagazine article detailing the connection between her island and the executed queen had assured that popular culture would always recognize the green-and-gold fragments in Douglass’ museum as belonging to Marie Antoinette.
She hopped down into the pit to clear a layer of loose soil off its bottom. Even though she was half-expecting it, she was startled to hear her trowel strike metal. Carefully peeling back the earth, she found a single rusted hinge and a layer of discolored soil left behind by rotting wood. Try though she might to find it, there was nothing else.
There were many ways to interpre
t this find, but there was one interpretation that she particularly liked: Jedediah Bachelder came here on two separate occasions, first burying the necklace and then the Confederate Gold. He retrieved them later, on a third visit, leaving behind only an emerald, a gold finding, and a hinged wooden box that had once enclosed the fabulous lost treasure of the Confederacy.
When the Confederate government finally collapsed, Jedediah Bachelder had been left holding a treasure that he was too ethical to spend on himself. He would no doubt have sold the necklace and used the proceeds to make himself comfortably rich. But the Confederate Gold…that was a different matter. It would have made him ridiculously rich. What better use for that money than to relieve the suffering left behind by a ruinous war?
No one would ever convince Faye that the man who wrote those tender letters to Viola could have done anything else. It could be no coincidence that Jedediah’s final bequest had given everything he owned to a home for penniless Confederate veterans.
It was time to call that reporter to come back for a follow-up story. If word got out that she’d found the treasure chest, and that its gold was long-gone, maybe she could keep some of her cherished privacy. Particularly if she could get the paper to print of a picture of Joe, taken before a bullet laid him low. Her extremely intimidating security guard should keep the riff-raff away. Most people would think twice about stealing from her if they knew they’d be tangling with Joe.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Joe must have felt really terrible, since he hadn’t fussed when Faye spread a blanket over his legs. He’d just sat propped up in Emma’s chaise lounge and stared at the sunlit trees. Faye had been steeling her nerves all day to talk to him, to pour out her heart, to ask him never to go away. Even if he couldn’t love her, she’d be okay if he never went away.
“I’m glad you’re home, Joe,” she began, but Joe interrupted her, possibly for the first time in his soft-spoken life.
“I never ever had so much time to think as I did when I was lying in that hospital bed. I figured out that there are a few things I want to do in this world before I leave it.”
Faye held her tongue, possibly for the first time in her outspoken life, but she was thinking, I want you to do those things as much as you do. But please do them with me.
“I want to finish school. It’ll be hard. I believe I’d rather take on a panther, bare-handed. But you showed me I could do it, and I thank you for that.”
Faye’s mouth tasted bitter. He was telling her good-bye.
“I don’t rightly know what I’ll do when I get out of school. Heck. It may take me till I’m forty to get that degree.”
Faye couldn’t imagine Joe at forty. He already had the centered, settled, solid air of someone who’d grown into himself. Middle age might not change him at all, but she would have liked to have had the chance to find out firsthand.
“I want to do something that’s useful to people, but I don’t want to sit at a desk. I looked out that hospital window so long that I know I never want a pane of glass between me and the world, not ever again.”
Faye could no more imagine Joe working at a desk than she could fly.
“And I want children. I can talk to children. Sometimes better than I can talk to adults.”
Something inside Faye broke. “I want you to go where your dreams take you, Joe, but I’d dearly love to see your children.”
He turned his eyes her way. They had always been green, like the leaves of the live oak trees that sheltered Joyeuse, and they always would be, even if he traveled farther than Faye wanted him to go. “Why wouldn’t you see them, Faye? Won’t you be there?”
Would she? Would she want to watch Joe make a life with somebody who wasn’t her? She didn’t know. Finally, the tears came.
“Faye. I’m telling you all this so you’ll know who I want to be. I want to be the right man for you. All this time, I’ve been telling myself that you’re too smart for me and too pretty and too…well, I’ve been telling myself that I wasn’t good enough. I laid flat on my back for a long time while I was getting well, and I didn’t do anything but think. Do you want to hear what I think? I mean, do you want to hear what I know?”
Faye nodded, wiping her eyes on the back of her hand.
“I know that I love you. I’ve loved you ever since you caught me camping on your island, but you were too tender-hearted to make me go away. And I know that I would be good to you. I think maybe that’s enough. If I can give you those two things, then maybe I’m good enough for you, after all. I want to be.”
She threw both arms around him, but she did it carefully. He’d been through hell and back, and he’d gone there because he put his own body between her and death. “I love you, Joe. I always have. If I’m so smart, why didn’t I know it?”
Joe rested his chin on her head and smoothed her hair with his big, calloused hand.
“Marry me, Faye.”
Guide for the Incurably Curious:
Teachers, Students and People Who Just Plain Like to Read
For those who have read Artifacts, what did you think of Faye’s return to her home on Joyeuse Island in Findings? When I took Faye to Alabama in my second book, Relics, some of my readers were concerned. They had enjoyed the island setting of Artifacts so well that they thought it would be risky to move the action. I think they thought that Faye wouldn’t be Faye if I plucked her off Joyeuse.
I was convinced that I needed to take Faye on the road for a couple of reasons. First, how many mysteries could she possibly solve from the vantage point of a single island? And second, how could I explore her character if I never took her out of her comfort zone?
In Artifacts, I put Faye through hell, but I left her on her home turf. In Relics and Effigies, I tested her in unfamiliar territory. When I began plotting Findings, I felt sure that it was time to take her back home.
It was fun for me to revisit the setting of my very first published novel, and it was a bit relaxing. I didn’t have to spend effort on designing Faye’s world, because I’d already done that. I’d already read about the way barrier islands are built, and I knew an awful lot—both from reading and from personal experience—about the ways the environment recovers from such a hurricane’s brutal assault by wind and water. And I knew almost all the characters intimately. With Findings, I was able to concentrate on crafting a story that functions as a pivot point in the lives of each of those characters.
As I finished writing Findings, I realized that it was different from my other books in some important ways. I consider mystery fiction to be the “literature of justice,” in the way that science fiction has long been called the “literature of ideas.” So it is no surprise that I considered my first three books to be explorations of the notion of justice. The real surprise for me was realizing that Findings was about something altogether different. What would you say was the central theme for this book? Reading my own book after it was already written, from the point-of-view of a reader, gave me an interesting perspective on Findings. Suddenly, it became apparent to me that I had written a book about love. This story is permeated with romantic love—Faye and Joe, Faye and Ross, Douglass and Emma, Jedediah and Viola, Magda and Mike, Curry and Sharon—there is hardly a character in this book who is not affected, for good or ill, by romantic love. Romance has never been a major theme in my previous books. How did these love stories work for you?
I originally created Jedediah and Viola Bachelder and their Civil-War-era world strictly for plot purposes. As I wrote, they all came alive to me. Jedediah and Viola developed a habit of saying and doing things that I never planned or expected. Joe’s character developed in that same way while I was writing Artifacts, and he continues to “tell” me what I should do with him. Do these characters feel real to you? And are there any other characters you particularly enjoyed? I always choose an unusual corner of history to explore in each book. I want to take readers to a place or time that they know little about. For t
his book, I wanted to take a peek at the short-lived government of the Confederate States of America. Many books, notably Gone with the Wind, have given us an image, factual or not, of everyday life in the American South before and during the Civil War. Battlefield scenes have been described in both fiction and nonfiction works. However, I don’t think the Confederate government is given much thought when most Americans think about the Civil War. Yet I wondered how one would go about setting up a government for a brand-new nation that was born at war.
Jedediah’s description of the CSA’s constitutional convention was based on descriptions of discussions said to have been held during the writing of the Confederacy’s constitution. His diplomatic trip to Europe was based on the real Duncan Kenner’s actual diplomatic efforts. Kenner is said to have recommended freeing the slaves as a way to solidify diplomatic ties with Europe to CSA President Jefferson Davis, but this plan never came to pass. It makes sense that a man like Jedediah would be chosen for just this sort of diplomatic mission.
Jedediah and Viola, when I first created them, existed only to provide an illustration of real situations that are often forgotten when we view the people affected by the American Civil War from this distance. Many citizens of the Confederacy owned no slaves simply because they could not afford them. A few, like Jedediah and Viola, owned no slaves because their conscience forbade it.
Though we often hear the cliché that our Civil War pitted brother against brother, we forget that this conflict extended to the non-military citizenry. Though I don’t say so, Viola was likely born in the North, since she mentions her mother in Pennsylvania. The story establishes that Jedediah spent his childhood on a Florida plantation, yet Viola mentions his aunt in Ohio. When war closed the channels of communication between family members, people were harmed in a way that’s not apparent by reading history books. To read Viola’s concern about their northern relatives puts the modern reader directly into this terrible enforced separation.
Findings Page 26
